


Pandora

by hyacinth_sky747



Category: Sherlock - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-24
Updated: 2011-08-24
Packaged: 2017-11-04 06:16:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/390704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hyacinth_sky747/pseuds/hyacinth_sky747
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John wakes up after the pool, broken.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pandora

When John woke up it was dark. He couldn’t tell if it was dark because his eyes weren’t open, or if it was truly dark. His face was wet and his ribs were sore, as if he had laughed or cried too hard and too long without knowing it. 

Someone was holding his hand and running a cloth over his face. The person (nurse probably) was saying, Shush, shush. Everything’s okay. 

John knew it was a lie. The nurse probably knew it was a lie. But it was a nice lie. If John was going to go on living he wanted to believe that lie. It was the most beautiful lie John had ever heard. But it was still a lie and John did not want to go on living. 

~*~

John didn’t open his eyes. If he opened his eyes people might expect him to do things. They might think he was okay. John was not okay. He didn’t want to lie and he really didn’t feel like doing things. Thinking of doing things made his head ache. Things like mail and milk, and sitting in his lonely room while the worries piled up just outside the door. 

No, that wasn’t right. That was before. Before what? John squeezed his eyes shut tight, tighter. He didn’t want to know. 

~*~

Sometimes people who weren’t nurses came to talk to him. John wished he could close his ears. He didn’t want to know who they were. Once, a man named Mycroft came in and John squeezed his eyes shut and shut and drew his knees to his chest and started to scream. The scream shut his ears and made the man named Mycroft go away. So John screamed at Sarah, and Mrs. Hudson, and his therapist when they came too. He didn’t scream at his sister, wouldn’t unless she said any of those names. She didn’t, and after she left John opened one eye, just a little. Soft rain was streaming down the window. John closed his eyes again.

~*~

There was a man in the room. He didn’t smell like a doctor. He smelled of exhaust fumes and wet wool. 

“There’s nothing wrong with you, John. If that’s the reason for all this, there’s nothing wrong with you. You had a few bumps and bruises but even those are healing. He’s okay too. Really okay, back home now.”

John took a deep breath and prepared to scream, but he didn’t. He could. He had the breath ready to go, but he didn’t. He was rather embarrassed to do so in front of this man. 

“No one wants anything from you, John, except for you to come back to us. Let’s start slow, yeah? Why don’t you open your eyes or say one word. That’s all, John. It’s hard, I know. But it’ll be over real quick.”

John didn’t. He pressed his lips together and shut his eyes tighter and tight. 

“Take your time.” 

John brought his knees to his chest and his fists to his eyes. He said goodbye to his safe place. 

“Lestrade,” he said. He didn’t recognize his own voice. It was deep and thin. 

John could hear the smile and relief in Lestrade’s voice. “Yes, John. Good lad. Open your eyes now. Come on. Shall I get a pretty nurse for you to look at instead of my ugly mug?”

John shook his head violently. He heard Lestrade take a deep breath. “Okay then. Just you and me. Just look at my face. You don’t have to look anywhere else.” 

Lestrade’s calloused hand gently drew one of John’s fists away from his eyes. John opened them. Lestrade’s eyes were over-bright with unshed tears but he was smiling. His face was inches away, his chin resting on the edge of John’s mattress. 

“Hi,” he said. John started to shake and he slammed his eyes shut again. Lestrade clicked his tongue softly and put his other hand on John’s shoulder. “Come on now. I’m not that ugly. Try again. Squeeze my hand.”

John felt Lestrade petting his tightly clenched fingers and John loosened them. He grabbed onto Lestrade’s hand. He breathed in and out, raggedly, loudly. 

“Easy,” Lestrade said. “Just you and me and my ugly mug, mate.”

John let the air out his lungs slowly. Took another, more normal breath in, and opened his eyes. 

Lestrade was still there. His eyes were still bright and John didn’t want to meet them for a moment. He looked wildly at their clasped hands and the bedside table. 

“Just look at me, John. That’s enough for now. Just look at me.”

John did. He was trembling so hard that the bed was creaking and his face was wet with snot and tears. Lestrade took his hand off of John’s shoulder long enough to get a tissue from his breast pocket and mop John’s face. 

“Don’t say everything will be okay,” John said.

“No? Alright. Everything’s okay for now though. For right now, everything’s okay. Let’s just build on that, shall we?”

~*~

That was Friday. By Sunday John was sitting up in bed and feeding himself. He still had a needle in his arm but it wasn’t hooked up to anything. He’d been to the bathroom by himself this morning. The mirror over the sink had been covered. John didn’t try to remove the paper. He didn’t want to see himself. 

They were giving him food that would fatten him up. He knew why. His bones were sticking out. They hurt to sleep on. He felt fluttery and see-through. He liked it. He didn’t want to be here. He couldn’t eat anything but tapioca pudding. He liked the bumps of it on his tongue. He liked how it was soft and non-threatening. He pushed everything else away. The nurse held out a vitamin and a glass of water with a no-nonsense look on her face. John swallowed it. 

The next day he ate an orange because it smelled clean and John wanted the cleanliness inside him, in his brain. He only wanted to think clean things. 

It didn’t work. No matter how many of them he ate. When he closed his eyes he would see things, feel things, smell things. He couldn’t close his eyes now. His safe haven was gone. He couldn’t find his way back there. When he’d left, hell had moved in. 

At dinner they put a pork chop in front of him and the smell sent John reeling. He kicked out at the tray, splattering the nurse with gravy. 

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please get it out of here. The smell.” 

The nurse, after her initial dismay, smiled at John and hurriedly took the offending item from the room. She came back after awhile with a bowl of tapioca and an orange, wearing a clean uniform. 

“I’m sorry,” John said again. 

“Happens all the time,” she said.

“Not by me. I just couldn’t stand the smell of it. You’re not hurt?”

“Hardly.” She opened his juice for him and sat in a chair by his bed. “Would you like a mirror?”

John didn’t reply until the tapioca was safe in his belly.

“What will I see?”

“A rather handsome face, probably thinner than what you’re use to. You have some stitches in your forehead and your hair’s been shaved over your left ear. There’re stitches there too. Your eyes were both blackened when they brought you in, but they’re rather yellow and purple now. Your top lip is a bit fat from where your tooth went through it. All of it will heal. The scar on your forehead will be under your hairline if you grow it a bit longer. Or you’ll just be the handsome bloke with the mysterious scar on his forehead.” 

“It’s not lightening-shaped is it?”

She laughed. “No. No. Not really. Just a straight-forward line, I’m afraid. Disappointed are we?”

“No, that’s not…no.”

He didn’t know her name. He had been told it but he didn’t know it. She wasn’t wearing a name badge.

“I’m John,” he said. “I don’t remember…”

“Yes! Sorry!” she said. “I always forget the damn name badge at home. I’m Brooke.” 

John smiled at her. He separated his orange into sections and began to eat them. There were twelve sections. He should feel clean after eating twelve. 

“Shall I get that mirror then?”

“Yep,” John said. He didn’t look up. He shoved the orange sections into this mouth while she opened the cabinet under the sink and brought out a hand mirror. John swallowed. “Hang on. No. Sorry. No.” He stared at the ceiling and tried to calm his breathing. 

“It’s okay. We can do it tomorrow if you’d like.”

“Can you call Lestrade?” John said. He was surprised. He didn’t know he was going to ask that. 

~*~

Lestrade was there in twenty minutes. He’d been nearby he said. He held one of John’s hands and put the mirror in the other. John looked into it and another John looked back out of it. He didn’t want to look in that John’s eyes. He looked at the neat row of stitches on his forehead (it was rather shaped like lightening) and at the bruising around his mouth and eyes. It was all fine. It would all fade. The face would grow fat again if John let it. John set the mirror down in his lap. 

“Not as ugly as yours then,” he said. 

Lestrade smiled. “The nurse wants you to take a shower. I’m sure the sponge baths are exhilarating but you’ve got be getting on with it yourself. Do you want me to stay? I could help or just…whatever you need, John.”

John was shaking. He tried to stop it. Couldn’t. “They’re going to send me home.”

“Soon. Not right this second. You’ll be ready.” 

“I don’t know if I have a home.”

“You do. You have a home. You can come stay with me, or go stay with Harry if you need to. But you do have a home.” 

“I screamed at Mrs. Hudson.”

“So did I.”

John looked up in surprise and Lestrade grinned. “Well no, I didn’t. But I will if it will make you feel better.”

John laughed. A little bit. It took him by surprise. He hadn’t planned on laughing anymore. He stopped. Waved at the windowsill with all its cards and flowers.

“He hasn’t even sent a bloody text.”

“Does that surprise you?”

“No. I wanted to be surprised.”

Lestrade didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say. 

“Shower? You’ll feel better.”

“I can’t ask you to do that.”

“I’ve two teenage sons. I helped Liam in and out of the bath all last summer when he broke his leg. It’s nothing I haven’t seen before. Besides, since you’re Harry Potter, you can just charm my memory and that will be that.”

John ran his fingers over his forehead. He felt a laugh coming but shoved it down and away. 

“Okay.”

~*~

There was bruising on his ribs and on his right hip and a massive bruise on his right thigh. John hadn’t felt them until he saw them but now they ached. He sat in the shower chair and let the water cascade over his body. He was okay. Lestrade was just outside. He moved the soap over his skin and through his hair. He tried to scrub the bruises away but they wouldn’t go. 

“John? You alright, mate?”

John scrubbed harder. The bruise on his thigh bothered him. He scrubbed at it. He used his nails. 

“I’m coming in.”

John’s thigh was bleeding and his eyes were stinging with soap. Lestrade took the shower nozzle from its holder.

“Hold your head back. Open your eyes and rinse them. All done.”

Lestrade shut off the water. John shivered and clawed at his thigh. 

“Can you stand?”

John shook his head. “I need my cane. I just need it.”

Lestrade put a towel over John’s lap and another around his shoulders. He brought the wheelchair close to the shower door and supported John’s weight as he climbed into it.

“I need my cane.”

“You’re going to ride for now.”

“I still need it. Where is it?”

“I’ll get it for you.”

Back in his room the nurse was waiting with a dose of morphine and a set of clean pajamas. John didn’t dream.

~*~

John hobbled down to the day room, leaning on his cane. There were large windows there and he stared out at the street. He was afraid. Morriarty could take him from here. He’d plucked John from a crowded street. He could take him from a hospital. He wouldn’t though. John was sure of it. Morriarty would wait until John felt safe. He’d let John work his way back from the trauma and then start the game again. John was only safe so long as he was terrified, or dead. He wondered if Morriarty was watching him now, had some lens trained on the hospital windows. Probably. John held up his middle finger. 

~*~

He went home on a Wednesday. 

He had a cane and a shower chair and prescriptions and appointments and numbers to call. Lestrade drove him to Baker Street in a police car. 

“You’re sure, John? We’ve got the guest room all ready for you.”

“Thank you. I’m sure.”

Lestrade helped him out of the car and carried up the shower chair and John’s bag. Sherlock was curled into the armchair with his laptop open. He looked up, catalogued, deciphered. Smiled. 

“Hello,” John said. 

Sherlock leaped up. “Tea?”

“Yes. Fine.”

Lestrade put down the chair and the bag. “John, offer stands, even if it’s only for a night, an afternoon. Call anytime.” 

John nodded. He could only nod. If he spoke he’d be on the floor begging the man not to go. Lestrade understood. He clapped John on the shoulder, nodded at Sherlock and left. 

John sat in the armchair. It was still warm from Sherlock’s heat. That was good. Like a hug. 

“You didn’t send a card or anything.”

“I sent Mycroft.”

“What?”

“You heard me, John. I sent Mycroft. I’m socially awkward. I would have said the wrong thing. He said you were fragile. I didn’t want to break you.”

Sherlock handed John his cup of tea and John sipped it. “You could have sent a card. They say things for you. The card companies hire people to say things for you.” 

“I was busy. I wouldn’t have done you any good there. I was working here. I’m tracking him.”

John shivered. 

“See? I’ve already said the wrong thing.”

John looked Sherlock over. He was out of practice. “Are you hurt? Were you hurt?”

Sherlock nodded and shook his head. Yes and no. “Bruised and battered. Burnt. On my side. Not hurt like you though. I opened my eyes right away. They let me go home. Next time you should just open your eyes.”

John’s breath caught on _next time_. His left hand began to tremble. 

“I’ve said something wrong again.”

“No. No, it’s fine. I’m fine.” 

“They told me not to go, John. They said you weren’t ready to see me. Are you ready now? I can go stay with Lestrade if…”

“No, damn it!” John hadn’t meant to yell it. “Sorry. Sorry. You can’t leave me alone is all.”

Sherlock steepled his fingers under his chin and studied John. 

“Before I got to the pool he…”

John was clenching his thighs tightly in his hands. “Yep. Yes. Okay? Let’s leave it.”

Sherlock nodded. 

John pointed at Sherlock’s shirt. “Let me see it.”

“It’s not bad, John. I was in the water right away.”

John waved this away. Pointed again. “Just. Let me.”

Sherlock raised his shirt to his armpit. It was a large burn. From his navel to just below his nipple. Healing now. Had to have been painful as fuck. 

“It was pretty bad.”

“Yes,” Sherlock said. He lowered his shirt. 

“Anything else?”

“No.”

John nodded. Sherlock opened his laptop and John got up to climb the stairs to his bedroom. He was too far away to hear clearly and Sherlock whispered it anyway. It sounded like, “I’m sorry, John.”

~*~

The shower was a problem. John could get in and out by himself. It was the bruises and the sound of the water. He took Sherlock’s IPod without asking, wrapped it in plastic wrap and brought it in with him. He played the same song over and over and over. He avoided the spots on his body that were bruised. He hurried. 

He forgot about batteries. How batteries die. The sound of the rushing water flooded into John’s ears. He was not at 221B Baker Street. He was back at the pool. There was the sound of water, the smell of it. 

~*~

John took, on average, five and half minutes in the shower. There were outliers of course, days he couldn’t bring himself to enter the shower at all. Days when he dropped the soap and got shampoo in his eyes. The shower had been running for forty-one minutes. Sherlock closed his laptop.

He knocked on the bathroom door. “John?”

No answer.

“Coming in.”

The water had run cold. Sherlock pulled back the curtain. John was sitting on his seat. His lips were blue. 

_I will burn the heart out of you._

Morriarty was winning. He’d use the thing that Sherlock loved best, the only thing that Sherlock loved, to burn his heart out. He’d destroy Sherlock by destroying John Watson. 

“John! You’ve got to stop this.” Sherlock turned the water off and grabbed the towels from the rack. He rubbed John’s arms and his hair. “Come on. Get out.” 

Somehow Sherlock got John to perch on the toilet seat, got a robe around him, slippers on his feet and started blowing the hair drier at his head. 

“You stole my IPod. Bastard.” _You stole my heart._ Sherlock didn’t need to say it out loud. It was perfectly obvious. Even John would be able to deduce it. 

Later, John was upstairs in his bed, not sleeping. Sherlock was in John’s bed too, also not sleeping. Laptop open, fidgeting. 

“Get me my pills,” John said after awhile. Sherlock gave him two and took one for himself. He set the laptop on the floor. John passed out and, after awhile, Sherlock followed. 

~*~

Sherlock needed John back. It’d been easy the first time. Distract a bloke with a bit of murder and a chase and he was sure to outrun his demons. This time he’d have to do something more elaborate. He’d left John in front of the television with Mrs. Hudson. He didn’t mean to get shot, he’d been hoping for some punches, maybe a knife graze, but a bullet in his side hadn’t been on the agenda. 

Still, it should do the job. If only there weren’t all these bloody stairs. 

“John! John!” He voice was weak. He sounded like a dying kitten. He banged his fist on the stairs. John hurried out onto the landing. No cane. No limp. Sherlock smiled.

“I’ve been shot.”

It had the effect he’d been hoping for. John, all business, ripping open Sherlock’s shirt, pulling off his own to put pressure on the wound. Yelling at Mrs. Hudson to call for help. John’s face swinging over his own in the ambulance, calling him all manner of foul names. 

“If you die I will kill you.”

Sherlock smiled.

“If you die I’ll stand on street corner until he finds me. He will find me. You’re the only thing keeping him away.”

Sherlock frowned. The morphine kicked in. He passed out.

~*~

He woke up. He opened his eyes right away. There were three Johns standing next to his bed. They were all angry. 

“See? Isn’t it nice to wake up in hospital and have your flat mate by your bedside?”

“You’re my doctor. You have to be here.”

All three of the Johns stuck out their lips in a way that looked like they were asking for a kiss but were really swallowing words they shouldn’t say. Sherlock thought that was nice, to have an angry face that looked like you were asking for a kiss. 

“You did this on purpose,” the Johns said. The sounds echoed in Sherlock’s head. 

“Can you be one person please?”

“What?” 

“I love you, but three is too many. I just want one of you.”

“What?” John whispered this. It was still loud.

“I need you strong. You’re no good to me when you’re jumping at shadows. War keeps you strong. I got hurt. You’re strong. Problem solved.”

John was very quiet. Sherlock looked at him with only one eye open and there was just one John standing there. He looked small and lonely without all the other Johns. 

“A bit not good?” Sherlock asked. 

“A bit,” John agreed. He turned to go. Limped a little and looked around for his cane. It wasn’t there. John Watson hobbled from the room. 

~*~

He hobbled down the hall. Stopped. Leaned on the wall for support. He breathed and breathed. In and out. In and out. He thought about his leg. Thought about Sherlock dying on the front stairs and the rush of need that had healed his leg. 

When he started walking again he wasn’t limping but his left hand trembled like a leaf in the wind. 

~*~

“You went to the gift shop.” Sherlock said. He didn’t mention the absent limp. He was learning.

John let his mouth fall open in mock surprise. “What science of deduction is behind this?”

“Shut up. You have a gift.”

“What is it though?” John asked. 

Sherlock studied John. “I don’t know. Something smart-ass.”

John handed it over. Sherlock tore off the paper. There was a plain, white box, the size of a teacup.

“Careful. Might be Pandora’s box. Some boxes are not meant to be opened. Could be a bit not good.”

Sherlock looked at him. “Could be a bit good. Hope in there.”

“Most dangerous thing in the world. Hope.”

Sherlock opened the box. There was nothing in there. It all came swirling out at him. Hope. Hope that was dashed. But it must be hope if it could be dashed. 

“Hope?”

“Air. It’s what I most wanted to give you. You were drowning.”

“Hope then.”

John shrugged. “If you like.”

Sherlock closed the box. He did not hug it to his chest, no matter what John said afterwards. 

“Come closer.”

John shook his head. “Not now. Not here. At home, when you’re not doped up.”

“We’ll always be a mess, John.”

John put on his angry kissy face again. “You said you needed me strong. You got shot so I wouldn’t limp.”

“You can limp all you like. You were broken in another way. Like you were when you first came to me. I needed you back.”

“I got fixed because it was okay to be broken. What if I get broken again?”

“Then I’ll fix you. That’s why it’s okay. I can fix you.”

“Not like this, Sherlock.”

“No! This will only work once. I’ll have to shoot Lestrade next time.”

John frowned.

“Okay. I’ll shoot Mycroft.”

John’s frown was wobbly. It wouldn’t hold. He smiled. 

“You’ll stay the night?”

“Of course. _I_ will.”

“I did come, John. I stood in the door. They told me to keep away but I…and I didn’t want to…I always say the wrong thing.”

John smiled again. “Not always.” 

“I’ll get him, John. Everything’s going to be okay.” 

It was still a lie but maybe it had some truth in it too.

John scooted his chair closer to the bed, held Sherlock’s hand until they fell asleep, the box of hope balanced precariously between them.


End file.
